Maxine Charles,24, was accused of a crime and sentenced to 16 months for stealing a truck, oblivious to an infant who was inside at the time. The truck was stopped moments after due to an eye witness. Before the truck was stolen it was left running while the owner of the vehicle went into a business, leaving a baby in the back seat. Although, the infant was not harmed and returned back to the parents, Charles, the Saskatchewan women, was prohibited from driving for a year, she was also told she could not consume alcohol for 9 months due to alcohol being an addiction that filled a void which was caused by her recent “toxic relationship”. The substances drove Charles to steal the truck. The judge, Steven Schiefer, “ordered her to pay $800 victim surcharge and undergo treatment for her addiction”.…
Ron Fridell states, "The basic principles of deterrence are that punishments are necessary to deter crime and encourage law abiding behavior. Punishment must also fit the crime with more serious crimes requiring more serious punishments. (61) I agree with the author because capital punishment serves as a device to discourage certain forms of behavior by making the consequences of these actions unpleasant. Capital punishment is acceptable under those terms and it is necessity to the betterment of society. Micheal Kronwetter said, "No other punishment deters men so effectively as the punishment of death."(19) As an example, murder peaked in 1990 with 2,200 deaths, when New York did not have the death penalty. In 1997, when capital punishment was reinstated the murders for the year totaled 767. Deterrence obviously worked in relation to these crimes. There seems to be a direct relationship between deterrence and the effects of capital…
The threat of punishment does not deter juvenile delinquency because if the juvenile is punished for his/her offense and is threatened by punishment their entire life without any update on the punishment then why would it be a legal punishment be any different? However, if a juvenile is being punished after doing wrong throughout life then the threat of legal punishment will be consider to be a strong deterrent.…
The deterrence model is the idea that the fear of punishment will prevent criminals or potential criminals from committing a crime. There are two different types of deterrence, which are general and specific. General deterrence is the preventing crime among the general population. The general public includes only those who have not committed a crime before. Specific deterrence is trying to prevent a specific group of people or specific person from committing a crime in the future. The deterrence model has been noted to not be effective. The deterrence model is half way effective because it does put fear in some people, but it does not exemplify all the many reasons people commit crimes. Many criminals or potential criminals may fear being…
Society’s efforts to deter crime with punishment may be ineffective because those individuals most prone to commit crime often act impulsively, with little thought for the future, and so they may be unmoved by the threat of later punishment. Deterrence messages they receive, therefore, may fall on deaf ears. This article examines this issue by testing the relationship between criminal propensity, perceived risks and costs of punishment, and criminal behavior. The authors analyzed data from the Dunedin (New Zealand) Study, a longitudinal study of individuals from birth through age 26 (N = 1,002). They found that in fact, deterrence perceptions had their greatest…
Deterrence: Its primary goal is to discourage members of society from committing criminal acts out of fear of punishment. The most powerful deterrent would be a criminal justice system that guaranteed with certainty that all persons who broke the law would be apprehended, convicted, and punished, and would receive no personal benefit from their wrongdoing. Examples of the deterrence theory of sentencing is to torture the offenders and to sentence them to the death penalty.…
The focused deterrence theory is having a direct approach with offenders to help prevent violence and have a stronger response to the ones committing crimes by pulling all legal levers against them. The focus tends to be for high offenders which are drug dealers and gang members. Gangs are notified that violence is not to be tolerated and if violence still happens then serious measures will bring a certain and immediate response. It is used to put a perimeter in the views of offenders. This helps prevent future organizations from forming due to the impact of the severity of punishments that await any offenders. This helps keep gangs and drug dealers under low profile and help keep the streets cleaner. These specific crimes are less likely to happen.…
Today in our country our justice system runs by two models in order to keep peace and order to the public the first model is the determinate sentencing model what the Determinate model is when the judge is about to pass a sentence on to defendant and to address the problem with crimes that has been going around since the 1980s for example the government of some states in our country passed the three strike laws where when someone commits a crime that is considered serious then they get harsher sentences and to tell people who are more likely to commit the crime to don’t do it and it is not worth it . One of the pros for the determinate sentencing model is that the defendant could be eligible for probation, parole and alternative programs…
The prevention theory states that if the consequence of committing a crime outweighs the benefit of the crime itself, the individual will be deterred from committing the crime. Professor of law Scot and professor of psychology Steinberg said "first, the threat of harsh sanctions may deter future crime generally by discouraging youths from ever getting involved in criminal activity. Second, imprisonment prevents crime by incapacitating offenders. Third, imprisonment could reduce future crime by rehabilitating young offenders so that they will mend their criminal ways" Champion and Mays, Criminal Justice Professors at California State University said Deterrence presumes that punishing an offender will prevent him or her from committing further acts of deviance, or will dissuade others from law-violating behavior, and the transfer of juveniles to adult court should serve a deterrent function. The adult criminal justice system has a worse punishment than the juvenile court therefore it will serve as a better deterrent factor to stop the juvenile violent crime. Effective deterrence will be able to ensure safety because it will stop the crime before it happens. When the consequences are worse, there will be less crime; therefore Juveniles should be treated as adults in the criminal justice system if they committed a violent…
Historical theories of punishment were based on the concept that applying fearful consequences to criminals would discourage any potential offenders. During the late 1700’s, a criminologist by the name of Cesar Beccaria argued the fact that the death penalty served no purpose as a form of punishment, let alone as a deterrence to criminals. He advocated to reform the criminal justice system through penology, concerning specifically with punishment and deterrence (Beccaria, 2009). In the following essay, Beccaria’s theory of punishment will be thoroughly…
Multiple studies have shown that stiff punishment acts as a deterrent to criminal behavior. Morgan Reynolds states that, “The reality is that the threat of bad consequences, including retribution posed by the legal system, protects life and property against predation” (3). Basically, criminals often know about the consequences they could face before they actually commit a crime. There is usually a period of time that the…
The one quote that stood out the most to me was the one given by the American Correctional Association. They stated, “The absence of a noticeable reduction in the adult crime rate as incarceration rates have climbed raises serious questions about the efficacy of America’s sentencing policies”. To me this is very relevant to society today. In American today the incarceration rates have climbed, but the adult crime rates have not reduced. Therefore, how effective is our sentencing policies in America. The American Correctional Association is hinting at the ideology of deterrence, and what deterrence should encompass. In goal of deterrence is highly theoretical (which is half the problem) in the fact that it is intended to prevent other potential offenders from committing crimes due to the potential for punishment. In other words, deterrence is supposed to make people not want to commit crimes if they see harsh punishment against crime. Therefore, the behavior of the offender should change, because they will not want to go through with the crime to resort with that harsh punishment. However, does this actually work? Do prisons deter people from crime? Behaviorally, I do not think deterrence works, because this might not faze them. Sometimes when people commit crimes, they do not care about the punishment, or feel any kind of remorse. Therefore, their behavior would not change so deterrence would be ineffective. Also, this also comes across the ideology of the death penalty, because that’s a major punishment. However, the death penalty doesn’t stop people from committing the crimes that person committed either. Therefore, deterrence simply does not work, because for an adult a slap on a wrist doesn’t cut it anymore. However, I believe incapacitation sentencing does work, and this should be used instead of deterrence. If you are imprisoned how are you supposed to commit crime? You simply can’t. Therefore, if an…
Increased penalties and incarceration are the main solutions of crime prevention for advocates who believe that drugs should be prohibited. Two main reasons for this are its deterrent effects and social harm factors (Levitt, 1996, Weatherburn, 2014). Levitt (1996), at the height of rapidly increasing speeds of incarceration writes that increased prison population is a threat to deter people from engaging in criminal acts due to an increased threat of imprisonment. Also, incapacitation will be a benefit to society as criminals are unable to commit crimes while incarcerated (1996). His study argues that for each prisoner released as a result of prison overcrowding, it is associated with an increase of fifteen crimes per year (1996). Conversely,…
In a powerful essay concerning prison’s deterrence of crime, Joel Waldfogel claims, “the likelihood being sentenced to prison jumps from 3 percent to 17 percent at exactly 18.” Despite this large change, offenses from teens aging 17 to 19 remain mostly consistent, which is unusual compared to the assumption that a higher chance of incarceration equals more apprehension towards committing a crime. Waldfogel goes on to state that a whopping one-fifth of people arrested in the weeks before their eighteenth birthday are later rearrested no more than a month later. Putting aside teenagers, looking at statistics from the 1980’s up until now gives some insight on the ineffectiveness of prison threats. There was a brief decrease in the number of crimes committed during the 1980’s when mass incarceration really began taking effect. This is often used to prove that the threat of prison time does in fact lower crime rates; however, the correlation here is offset by the fact that economy was in a stable state during this…
The relationship between incarceration and crime has been examined for a long time. Some researchers have posited that incarceration reduced crime. Others have argued that incarceration did not reduce crime; even, a few of researchers insisted that it increased crime. Also, some scholars have contended that incarceration brought about unintended or collateral consequences. By delving into numerous studies focusing on the relationship between incarceration and crime, this literature review will illuminate important facts surrounding the incarceration and crime; and provide a better understanding of the incarceration impact on crime as well as the society.…